Monthly Archives: January 2021

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Jan. 28, 2021

Only you know that I [am qualified to] attain Bodhi
Because I heard [the Dharma].
I will expound the teachings of the Great Vehicle
And save all living beings from suffering.

These verses are sung to the Buddha by the six-year-old daughter of the dragon-king Sāgara in Chapter Twelve of the Lotus Sūtra. She appeared before the congregation when called by the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī from whom she had been taught the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Sūtra. Most of those gathered did not believe that such a young creature, much less a female, could reach the same enlightenment as the Buddha. But then before their eyes, she made all the transformations necessary and began to teach the Wonderful Dharma herself.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

LS32

Day 9

Day 9 covers Chapter 5, The Simile of Herbs, and introduces Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood.

Day 9 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month heard the assurance of future buddhahood for Mahā-Kāśyapa, we conclude today’s portion of Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood, with the famished man and the king’s supper.

Thereupon Great Maudgalyāyana, Subhūti and Mahā-Kātyāyana trembled, joined their hands together with all their hearts, looked up at the World-Honored One with unblenching eyes, and sang in gāthās in unison:

Great Hero, World-Honored One!
King of the Dharma of the Śākyas!
Give us your voice
Out of your compassion towards us!
If you see what we have deep in our minds,
And assure us of our future Buddhahood,
We shall feel as cool and as refreshed
As if we were sprinkled with nectar.

Suppose a man came
From a country suffering from famine.
Now he saw the meal of a great king.
He did not partake of it in doubts and fears.
After he was told to take it by the king,
He took it at once.
We are like that man.
We know the defects of the Lesser Vehicle.
But we do not know how to obtain
The unsurpassed wisdom of the Buddha.

Although we hear you say [to us],
“You will become Buddhas,”
We are still in doubts and fears about it,
Just as that man was about the meal.
If you assure us of our future Buddhahood,
We shall be happy and peaceful.

You, the Great Hero, the World-Honored One,
Wish to give peace to all the people of the world.
If you assure us of our future Buddhahood, we shall be
Like the man who was permitted to take the meal.

See Reciprocal Bonds

Foundations

‘Again, it is a conventional designation’

sā prajn͂aptirupādāya
We have seen above that “conventional designation,” or that which is referred to by language, is one of the meanings of saṃvṛti [the empirical truth]. Reality is ultimately beyond adequate verbal expression, but we must communicate and “name” things and experiences if we are to live in this mundane world. The objects of our everyday experience can (according to Chih-i) be referred to as existing in the sense of arising interdependently. Our phenomenal world has temporary reality in the sense of an integrated, co-arising, interdependent relationship of causes and conditions. This is called “conventional” existence. One can also see that this is another way of making the same point as was made in the first two lines [All things which arise through conditioned co-arising / I explain as emptiness].

Foundations of T'ien T'ai Philosophy, p 5
WONS

Merits in Keeping the Precept of Not Telling a Lie

As we cannot see this with our own eyes, we may wonder whether or not there are sūtras superior to the Lotus Sūtra in India, the Dragon Palace, palaces of the Four Heavenly Kings, and the palaces of the sun and moon gods. Were not the King of the Brahma Heaven, Indra, the gods of the sun and moon, the Four Heavenly Kings and the Dragon King present at the assembly of the Lotus Sūtra? If heavenly gods who were present at the assembly like those of the sun and moon say, “You may not know this but there is a sūtra superior to the Lotus Sūtra,” they are absolute liars. I, Nichiren, would charge them declaring:

It is due to their merits in keeping the precept of not telling a lie that the sun and moon stay high up in the sky as securely as we human beings stand on the earth. If they should utter such a lie as there are sūtras superior to the Lotus Sūtra, they would fall before the Kalpa of Destruction and this world would come to ruin. They would not stop falling until they hit the bottom of the Hell of Incessant Suffering. Such inadmissibly deceiving beings could not possibly remain in the sky even for a while orbiting the four continents which surround Mt. Sumeru.

Hōon-jō, Essay on Gratitude, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 3, Pages 6-7.

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Jan. 27, 2021

World-Honored One! I bring you a message from Pure-Flower-Star-King-Wisdom Buddha. [He wishes to say this.] Are you in good health? Are you happy and peaceful or not? Are the four elements of your body working in harmony or not? Are the worldly affairs bearable or not? Are the living beings easy to save or not? Do they not have much greed, anger, ignorance, jealousy, stinginess and arrogance, or do they? Are they not undutiful to their parents, or are they? Are they not disrespectful to śramaṇas, or are they? Do they not have wrong views, or do they? Are they not evil, or are they? Do they not fail to control their five desires, or do they?

The passage above is how Wonderful-Voice Bodhisattva greets Śākyamuni Buddha in Chapter Twenty-Four of the Lotus Sūtra. This Bodhisattva asks not only about the Buddha, but about those whom the Buddha benefits with his teaching. The Buddha answers that those he teaches have prepared through innumerable lives to receive his wisdom. The questions of Wonderful-Voice show how we obscure the teaching through our delusion and attachments.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

LS32

Day 8

Day 8 concludes Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith, and closes the second volume of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 8 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the expedient used by the father to attract his son in gāthās, we witness the son receive his inheritance in gāthās.

The son was entrusted
With the keeping of the accounts
Of gold and silver,
And of pearl, crystal, and so on.
But he still lodged
In the hut outside the gate, thinking:
“I am poor.
None of these treasures are mine.”

Seeing the mind of his son
Becoming less mean and more noble,
The father called in
His relatives, the king, ministers,
Kṣatriyas, and householders,
In order to give his treasures to his son.

He said to the great multitude:
“This is my son.
He was gone
For fifty years.
I found him Twenty years ago.
I missed him
When I was in a certain city.
I wandered, looking for him,
And came here.
Now I will give him
All my houses and men.
He can use them
As he likes.”

The son thought:
“I was poor, base and mean.
Now I have obtained
The treasures, houses,
And all the other things From my father.
Never before
Have I been so happy.”

See Maintaining Faith and Discernment

LS32, d7b, d8b, b4today

Maintaining Faith and Discernment

[After abandoning a servile spirit,] the second mental attitude that we learn from chapter 4 is to maintain both faith and discernment toward the Lotus Sutra. Without both, we cannot fly surely to the Buddha’s arms. We are liable to deviate from the right course, either to a wrong one or to a blind alley in human life. If this should happen to us, we need to read the Lotus Sutra over again. In that way we can be sure of finding the way to return our lives to the right course, because the Lotus Sutra includes teachings that are applicable to people in all situations; we can come to our senses by beginning with any portion of the sutra. This is how we can escape from blind alleys in human life.

Buddhism for Today, p71
Foundations

Chih-i’s Threefold Truth

What is the relationship between the sacred and the profane, between the realm of the perfected saint and this imperfect world of everyday life, between the City of God and the City of Man, between heaven and earth, between this world and that world, between the Buddha and the ordinary ignorant man. In short, what is the nature of reality and existence? Is the pure realm of the sacred only an “ideal,” a “mythical” goal, separate from our ordinary lives and forever beyond our reach? If the perfect and ordinary are separate realms, how are they related, and how does one get “from here to there”? If they are the same, whence the suffering and painfully obvious imperfections of our mundane lives? These are questions which must be dealt with by any epistemology or religious philosophy, and by any person seeking an answer to the mysteries of life.

Nāgārjuna’s answer, which served as the basis for much of subsequent Mahāyāna Buddhist thought, is found in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā [The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way], most succinctly in chapter twenty-four, verses eight and nine:

8. All Buddhas depend on two truths
In order to preach the Dharma to sentient beings.
The first is the worldly mundane truth.
The second is the truth of supreme meaning.

9. If one is not able to know
The distinction between the two truths,
One cannot know the true meaning
Of the profound Buddha Dharma.

These verses are the most explicit formulation of the two truths, or twofold truth, theory of Mādhyamika philosophy. … Chih-i’s threefold truth concept is an extension of the traditional Mādhyamika theory of the two truths as explicitly taught in chapter twenty-four, verses eight and nine, of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. The direct literary inspiration for the formulation of the threefold truth concept is found in verse eighteen of the same chapter. …

This verse can and was interpreted as speaking of the identity of the two truths, emptiness (śūnyatā = paramārthasatya) and co-arising or conventional designation (pratītyasamutpāda = saṃvṛtisatya = prajn͂aptirupādāya), as the Middle Path (madhyamā). Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation of this verse, on which Chih-i relied completely, more clearly implies the understanding of the Middle Path as a third component in a single unity.

All things which arise through conditioned co-arising
I explain as emptiness.
Again, it is a conventional designation.
Again, it is the meaning of the Middle Path

Foundations of T'ien T'ai Philosophy, p 1-4
Lecture on Lotus Sutra

Never-Despise Lesson

Quote

The story of Never-Despise Bodhisattva is a perfect example of taking the approach that the other person is a Buddha and how best are we able to respect them as they are. We may need to employ strategic methods such as when Never-Despise would move away when the others were trying to abuse him or throw things at him, but he never ceased to remain engaged. He did not preach change to those other folks; he merely bowed to them with respect. His message wasn’t, “You will become Buddhas if you do certain things.” His message was they were already Buddhas.

Lecture on the Lotus Sutra

WONS

The Royal Children of the Lotus Sūtra

[W]ithout the power of the Lotus Sūtra, it is impossible for any living being to attain Buddhahood, break through the six lower realms and be reborn in any of the Pure Lands of Buddhas throughout the universe. It is the same as a Japanese person who wishes to enter the Chinese Imperial Palace must first receive permission from the Japanese sovereign. You must rely on the power of the Lotus Sūtra in order to leave this Sahā World to enter a Pure Land. For example, if a woman, whether she be an ordinary woman or a daughter of the Imperial Regent, bears a king’s child, that child will someday become a king. On the other hand, if a daughter of a king bears a vassal’s child, that child can never become a king. Accordingly, all living beings including bodhisattvas, men of the Two Vehicles, human beings, heavenly beings and animals who will be reborn in Pure Lands throughout the universe do so as royal children of the Lotus Sūtra. It is because children of the Lotus Sūtra are all able to become Buddhas.

Shōjō Daijō Fumbetsu-shō, The Differences between Hinayāna and Mahāyāna Teachings, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 197